- Both McC and Palin seem cold-blooded about firing people, might be seen as feature rather than bug [McLaughlin/Baseball Crank] #
- Legal obstacles to four day work week [Point of Law via @lilyhill] #
- Yep, that’s Joe: Biden said he’s “done more than any other senator combined” for trial lawyers [Point of Law] #
- Day of protest against software patents [OUT-LAW via @lawtweets] #
- Related? “EPO staff strike over patent quality” [OUT-LAW] #
- What a curious Nigerian scam email, do you think it could be genuine? [Cernovich] #
Archive for 2008
Spore DRM
Electronic Arts/Maxis, which makes the new evolution simulation game Spore, gave it more aggressive digital rights management than many users wish it had, so it’s off to court with a lawsuit filed by class action firm KamberEdelson and named plaintiff Melissa Thomas. (Chris Faylor, “Spore DRM Prompts $5M Class Action Lawsuit”, ShackNews, Sept. 24; Courthouse News, Sept. 23).
Smells like a zoo in here
A Miami area maid is suing her employer, Hampton Inn, in federal court there, claiming she was forced to clean up after hotel guests who defecated and urinated on floors, left feathers strewn about, and emitted allergenic dander. The guests included “Maya the spider monkey, Bob the alligator, Tango the Macaw”, and two lemurs, along with their human handlers. The multispecies group all stayed at the Hampton Inn at Miami Airport hotel for about a week while in town as part of a traveling zoo.
Interesting notes about the case include 1) a filing showing a training manual created by Busch Gardens, which had hired the traveling zoo, sensibly suggesting animal handlers “[b]ook a room near an ice machine when on the road with penguins”; and 2) plaintiff Arlin Valdez-Castillo’s claim to have been kidnapped and driven to a cemetery by two men who pressured her to drop the lawsuit. (Douglas Hanks, “Traveling zoo at hotel made me sick, maid says”, Miami Herald, Sept. 24).
Cavorter’s remorse, cont’d: topless mermaid suit case
Spot the antecedent of “her” in this lead paragraph from SixShot.com:
A New York judge yesterday (September 22) dismissed a lawsuit filed against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Vibe Magazine over a picture that showed her topless at a party hosted by the Bad Boy mogul.
It reads as if “her” would have to refer to “judge”, but not so: it was hedge fund manager Maria Kristina Dominguez who sued the magazine and music celebrity. The judge threw out her suit, ruling that the “photo was related to newsworthy issues of public interest and Dominguez had no right of privacy while cavorting topless”. More on flasher’s remorse here, etc.
Inmate’s moldy mattress worth $295,000
Following a jail riot, Reggie Townsend, serving 23 years in a Wisconsin prison, was put in a segregation unit with “wet, moldy and foul-smelling” bedding which the jailer did not change despite his request. “Though he did not suffer any physical harm from the unsanitary bedding, Townsend was deprived of the ‘minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities,’ the jury decided after deliberating six hours,” and awarded him $295K. (The Smoking Gun, Sept. 19; AP/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Sept. 23).
Major League Baseball takedown notice
Microblog 2008-09-23
- @carney John Carney on short selling “I want a personal uptick rule. No one can be mean to me unless it’s preceded by good news about me.” #
- Megan McArdle on the run on money market funds, thanks @petewarden Atlantic #
- George Will implicitly endorsing Obama? Sure looks like it WaPo #
- Kevin LaCroix keeps a tally of credit crisis investor lawsuits D&O Diary thanks @lilyhill #
- Moose causes 9-car pileup right here in the NYC suburbs, Sarah come help White Plains Journal-News #
- Politicshome USA is pretty neat election site even aside from their flattering the heck outta me Overlawyered #
Couple’s contract for ‘exclusive relationship’ goes to court
My girlfriend and I are celebrating our fifteenth unmarried anniversary in the coming days. While the idea of marriage has never appealed to either of us, I have always viewed contract marriage–and by contract I mean an explicit contract rather than the rudimentary implicit social contract–as slightly better than the traditional alternative. Still, the concept of contract marriage (like the prenup) has the downside of being a bit too much like a business arrangement for my liking.
I have often wondered if, were courts to fully embrace contract marriage, they might also recognize a status short of it: something akin to a relationship contract. That’s the issue facing an Illinois court right now Read On…
Guestblogging
Greetings. I’m Baylen Linnekin. I am a 3L at American University in Washington, DC–where I serve on the editorial board of the Administrative Law Review–and co-proprietor of the libertarian food blog Crispy on the Outside.
I’m a big fan of Overlawyered and will be guestblogging here for the remainder of the week. (You may have noticed my first posts yesterday.) I’m particularly interested in food law–foie gras and bacon dogs are under legal attack, you know–and will likely be offering a few thoughts in that area in the coming days.
PoliticsHome “Online 100”
PoliticsHome.com offers “minute by minute coverage of campaign ’08 — all on a single screen”; it’s the developing U.S. branch of an innovative British site launched earlier this year. Among its features is an “Online 100” poll (see right-hand column)
The PoliticsHome Online 100 Panel consists of the 100 leading online voices in the United States. Each day until November 4th, the ‘Online100’ panel will answer 5 strategic questions anonymously and the results will be posted on PoliticsHome. Find out how the blogosphere is calling the election on PoliticsHome.
The panel includes Arianna Huffington, Karl Rove, Joe Klein, Joe Trippi, Mike Allen, Mark Halperin, Mark Blumenthal, Dana Milbank, Jonah Goldberg, John Fund, Jake Tapper, Chuck Todd, Marc Ambinder and Andrew Sullivan.
I’m not nearly as well known as many of the above names, but they’ve included me in the Online100 as well, and we’ve been answering questions about various campaign issues (the consensus is that Obama’s response to Palin was his worst strategic mistake lately; as for predictions of who’s going to win, the two candidates are locked in a dead heat at the moment.) Especially if you’re a politics junkie, check it out today.